only a small number actually bother with raids t2 and beyond. BWL wont be what keeps 100s of thousands playing
They DO have an art team assigned to the Classic project to my understanding, but they’re pretty small, and their purpose isn’t to create new assets, but to instead help figure out why things are rendering in the Classic Client the way they seem to be doing so(relative to the reference client) and seeing what can be done to make the Classic Client match the Reference.
This.
It’s no skin to send a C&D to every private server they can find, and they aren’t penalized for ones they legitimately didn’t know about, but before Classic, those could be argued in EU courts as Vanilla could be considered abandonware undre the Orphan Works Act. With Classic, it cannot, and anyone ignoring a C&D is on an easy path to a lawsuit or settlement.
I think you’ll find that the modern scene is vastly different, with raiding being a major component, because too many kids have been raised that way.
and they still have trouble going after servers in places like Russia and Romania. the US technically has treaties with those countries that would help blizzard go after those servers, but the local governments dont seem to actually care about it or enforce them
Phase 3 should be in the 5 to 6 month window, as that phase include BWL, and it released 7 months into Vanilla’s initial run.
Phase 2 should be somewhere around 6 weeks to 8 weeks in, IMO, it could be as early as 4 weeks, but I doubt it–unless the population numbers are dropping like a rock.
There are no “abandonware” laws. No such concept exists in IP law. It’s something made up by piracy and other such websites to make it sound like what they’re hosting is somehow legitimate.
But with IP Law being what it is, making the effort to protect their IP is enough to keep it protected. They aren’t required to have a 100% success rate, but they do have to have 100% attempt rate on enforcing their IP rights.
It’s why Disney gets so much bad press for going after day cares who use “unauthorized portrayals” of Disney characters on their walls, and other such things. Because once Disney became aware of it, if they did nothing, they’d vacate their rights to that IP.
There’s a reason Vanilla grew to 8 million subs. It’s a well designed mmorpg. It rewards commitment and investment. It creates immersion. You feel connected to your character. Community is king.
Players will get sucked in just like they were 15 years ago.
4 Likes
There are, even in the United States at this point, as arbitrated by the Library of Congress IIRC.
The EU even has a law on the books that creates a legal grey zone.
“There is no proven law” on the matter because developers haven’t made the attempt to litigate anybody in the jurisdictions where those legal grey zones exist.
Just because nobody has won a case using those laws “pirates sites are making up” doesn’t mean the laws don’t exist, it simply means the people with the IP rights either don’t know their rights are being violated, or know, but don’t want to risk officially losing their rights by going after them.
So instead they start releasing them as “retro titles” instead, then start going after the sites they know about which don’t take their stuff down.
Then you recall incorrectly. If you own the copyright on software you have the right to enforce it, regardless of how long its been since you’ve sold or updated it.
I expect a very significant drop after 1 month.
1 Like
What would Classic raiding offer that Retail doesn’t? Vanilla’s raiding was never its strong suit or why it exploded in popularity.
You’re both right, and wrong.
But you’re also confusing Copyright law with Trademark Law. Both cover different parts of Intellectual Property Law.
Trademark Law requires 100% enforcement or you can lose the trademark.
It’s not about what it offers. It’s about the fact that even the original Vanilla players have been retrained to focus more on Raiding.
For example, when I played Vanilla, 2005 was all about having fun and mucking around with friends. I occasionally got into a friend’s MC raid as early as 1.2, and experienced a few of the “Race through Blackrock Depths” times, etc. But since I was Oceanic on a US server, I couldn’t get a raid group, until someone created a Raiding Alliance on the other faction timed for Oceanic at the start of 2006. So I flipped and rerolled from scratch, rebuilt my character base, and raided like there was no tomorrow. And it was great fun.
These days, more people aren’t going to start out with a year of mucking around, and are going straight into the raiding scene. Meaning that there’s a far greater depth of people who will be attempting raiding and allowing teams to keep progressing rather than the fallback that kept happening early on as they couldn’t find replacements.
The mindset of the MMO genre has changed over 15 years, and we didn’t all get a memory wipe with the Classic install.
1 Like
It’s ok if there is a drop off, there is no rule that says people have to play forever. There is also no rule that says Blizzard has to make changes to keep players from leaving whatever the reason.
#NoChanges
1 Like
How does being an ex-lawyer have anything to do with this game?
every game drops off at some point, 6 months or so is pretty normal
i dont see classic greatly changing the gaming market, i think it will be niche
2 Likes
Have you met Blizzard’s financial department? Or the Activision Shareholders?
Blizzard is a corportation that is run for-profit.
People leaving mean cancelled subscriptions. Cancelled subscriptions mean less revenue, which means less profit.
They’re going to do whatever they can which they believe to be good for their business. Which means they’re going to be taking measures to get people to stick around. I just don’t expect it to be by making changes to Classic.
They’ll instead try to lure them into retail, or a Classic+ offering.
Ask Ion, he’s a lawyer by training.